Ann: September 2024 Quarterly Presentation, page-42

for what its worth.. which really is bugger all since the reality of the situation will be what it is and have little regard for my opinion... I think trump is a knobhead that has managed to capture the populist hungry demographic that are really tired with the constant bs from the vast majority of other politicians who have a record of churning over the same rhetoric, lies and producing nothing new for decades on end.

People have conflated trumps populist appeal and abrasive way of engaging with the 'establishment' with the ability and desire to effect true change that will benefit the common man or America in general.
This is trumps con.

I think he's just a polished conman who knows how to pull the strings of public opinion in such a way that after his needs are served, his followers think they will get what he promised them. He already had 4 years and probably caused more probs than he solved, 100 percent didn't make America great again. Nothing close to it, just stirred up a lot of shit on the basis of the maga dream, fuelled the fires of inflation,tribalism and accelerated the govt debt further.

Radical change is needed, People are desperate for meaningful change so respond to the Wolf whistles of someone who pretends to offer this. No one else offers close to the appeal of his hollow narrative but it's fake as his orange tan. Trump is streetwise and ruthless in the arena of public opinion and knows how to capture the imagination and dreams of his followers to serve his aims. He fails a lot and doesn't really achieve what he claims from what I can see.

kamala and Co are equally useless but in a different way. Seems more like they a more orderly controlled path to some inflationarey hell. But equally inept at dealing with the underlying problems.

I do like trumps thick skinned ability to bust down tradional barriers and do what he wants but in most cases he's willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater to get what he personally wants.

He had his chance and failed. His followers seem to endlessly forgive him though because there seems to be no alternative and he knows how to whip them along.. I mean he got vaxxed ffs.. so much for standing up against the establishment.

he's full of lies and bs but I will say as much as Elon musk is a polarising figure I think it was a smart choice by trump to team with him. With trumps ability to ignore the establishment and do rash stuff combined with elons ability to implement radical and sometimes effective ideas probably quite a lot of good change could have been made.. at what expense I dont know.. someone would be hurting a lot.. i suspect govt employees esp so.. but all I do know is that the chicken shits in seemingly most govts around the world, esp Oz are quite happy to keep sweeping the real underlying structural problems under the carpet for the next guys to deal with. Debt/productivity/govt regulation/freedom of speech/inflation/housing affordability, sensible sustainable immigration, pc gender bullshit thats kinda wreaking havoc in the name of other more benign sounding forms. I suspect Elon could have helped cut through the bs in this regard quite a bit but in the end Trump is just out for himself first and foremost and will serve himself before others. He could just as quickly turn on Elon.

anyway.. wow I can waffle on, sorry.. but yeah seems we are going to hell in a handbasket but Australia at least is in not too bad a position in some ways.. we have resources at least.. lots of them.. and if this is supposedly what gives the brics a lot of their power well we will also have some of that power.. maybe a greater share of it since we are free to trade with most people on the planet who use them including both brics and America.. its not like we can't trade with the brics countries and are.. however they worded it.. cant remember exactly but a preferred supplier of sorts for America.. so should the shit hit the fan and china try to restrict supply of rare earths or many of the green/esg minerals to the USA or its allies we can step up and fill in that gap. sell to uncle Sam but brics too if we need to.

this all shines the light on dre in a good way I think. We have the unprintable minerals which the future seems to indicate there will be a need for no matter who is in power andwhetherthey choose the path of peace or something else .hopefully peace, but it does seem that a lot of our differences are coming to a head and will be resolved one way or another.